Scientists finally examined the Lagoa Santa skeletons in the 1960s. Laboratory tests showed that the bones could be fifteen thousand years old—possibly the oldest human remains in the Western Hemisphere. Lund had noted the skulls’ heavy brows, which are rare in Native Americans. The new measurements confirmed that oddity and suggested that these people were in many ways physically quite distinct from modern Indians, which indicated, at least to some Brazilian archaeologists, that the Lagoa Santa people could not have been the ancestors of today’s native populations. Instead the earliest
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